Down on My Knees
by aceinit
Summary: Slash, not graphic. Daniel makes a difficult decision that will leave SG-1 a member short. Jack tries desperately to change his mind, but will a last-minute plea be enough?


_**Spoilers:** Not really. Takes place before Daniel cut his hair (and, obviously, before he left the show.)  
**Warning:** In case you didn't catch it in the summary, there's a lot of slashy stuff going on here. It's not hard-core, or even that soft-core, but it's there.  
**Obligatory Disclaimer:** I don't own SG-1 or, for that matter any of the other SG teams. I'm not in this for the money. If I ever make a dime from this story, I'll be really, really surprised.  
**Dedication:** For RaeC, who so consistently captures Jack and Daniel better than I could ever hope to._

* * *

_**Down on My Knees**_

* * *

"I quit, Jack." 

He says it with the finality of someone who's made a major decision. The kind of decision that's going to make a drastic impact on the rest of his life. And, for that matter, mine. The kind of decision he's spent at least a few sleepless nights agonizing over. Which would explain what's been up with all the tossing and turning.

"Quit what?" I ask, because he's waiting on me to say something in response. I can tell by the way his eyes panic behind his glasses that that wasn't the one he wanted. I don't know what else to say, though. I have no idea what he's talking about, even though he's looking at me like I should. I don't. Lately, I never seem to know what he's talking about. Not that a lot of what he'd ever had to say made much sense to me. Theories, predictions, crazy ideas that no one in the scientific community would ever believe. But I'd never understood any of that, never really made an effort to try, important was it was to him. As much as he'd wanted me to understand, or at least be happy along with him whenever he came across some new discovery. I always had been happy for him, moved myself every time I saw that familiar spark of discovery in his eyes. I never allowed myself to show it though, and usually made some kid of deprecating remark at his expense.

But whatever he'd come to tell me had nothing to do with his being a scientist.

"This." He opens his arms to encompass all of my office. Papers and files are everywhere, reports that need writing, files that need filing. I'm never going to get caught up. The place is a wreck, running against the flow of every scattered yet anal-retentive tendency he has built up inside of him. Still, I know enough to know he's not complaining about the state of the room. If he was, he wouldn't be looking at me like he's ready to take a swing at me or start crying. He'll probably do both before all is said and done. I'm wondering which I need to brace for first and, all things considered, I'd rather take the punch. I've had enough experience with those to know how to cope. The tears thing I'm a lot newer at and, well, I'd handled it so brilliantly the first time around, with Sara. With myself every time I'd thought about putting a gun to my head.

As he waits for me to say something else, a lock of shaggy hair falls across his eye. He tries not to look obvious as he wipes his eyes and pushes the strand back into place. It falls right back across his face, bringing a few of its friends with it, and the act of defiance brings him even closer to the inevitable tears. I still don't know what's going on, but I know enough to know he's not this frustrated because some of that mane needs trimming.

"I'm sorry, Daniel, you're going to have to be a bit more specific." I can hear the annoyance in my own voice. This isn't a good time to be annoyed, but I can't help myself. I'm supposed to be able to interpret some vague message about quitting. Quitting what? I don't do well with inferences, never have. _He knows that. Lay it out for me, Daniel. Make me understand.  
_  
So he stands there for a moment, eyes brimming behind the glasses which are mostly obscured by the dark hair. He laces his arms across his chest, something he only does when he's feeling extremely vulnerable, when he knows his world is going to come crashing down on him.

"I quit SG-1." His eyes are surprisingly level despite the moisture that makes them waver.

"Daniel--"

"Don't say anything yet, 'cause that's not all I have to say."

"Then say it." Damn it, I really don't mean to sound so sharp. I love him, as much as I hate to admit it to myself, but I can't fathom what he's talking about. Or why in the hell he's suddenly quitting SG-1 when he cares about it more than any of the rest of us. When he'd fought so hard and stood up to Hammond just to earn a spot on the first team.

He can that tell I still don't understand, so he spells it out for me. Just like I'd wanted him to. "I quit us."

That much, at least, I get. I set my pen aside. To be more precise, it drops from my fingers and just happens to land on my desk.

"You don't mean that." I don't know if I'm ordering him or pleading with him.

He shakes his head. Starts crying. The sight draws me immediately from my seat. I'd promised him once that I'd never made him cry, swore to him that I'd be the one thing in his life he could cling to. I want to wipe those tears away, tell him sorry and do whatever the hell I have to do to keep my promise. Because I love him. I do.

"Don't." He steps back before I can reach him, his fingers kneading into his biceps, hugging himself because he won't let me near him. "I mean it, Jack. I quit."

So I stand there, bracing myself against my desk with one hand. I make myself lower the other, which has been suspended in midair ever since I reached to touch him. "Why?"

"You," he answers simply, and I stare at him again because I'm back to not knowing what he's talking about. "I can't let you do this to yourself anymore. I can't let you do it to me anymore. I'm leaving."

"Why?" I ask again. It's all I can say. Because_ I don't know _what he's talking about. Doing what? What the hell am I doing to us to make him say these things? Because whatever I'm doing, I'll stop doing it just as soon as he tells me what it is.

_This is Chicken Little calling Alpha One: the sky is falling, Alpha One. Repeat, the sky is falling. _

Alpha One to Chicken Little: Get some Krazy Glue and Duct Tape and see what the hell you can do about it.

He takes his glasses off. _All the better to not see you with, my dear. _He sniffles like a child and, for one moment, I think he's going to break down and turn into a complete emotional wreck on me. I couldn't deal with that any more than he wants to have to go through it in front of me. But he pulls himself together, straightens himself, squares his shoulders, does everything he's seen me do when I want to be tin soldier boy.

Oh, damn.

Oh, shit.

Oh fucking hell.

"Danny--"

"Don't ask," he says, trying his best to speak through a set jaw. The unspoken words of that stupid mandate hang between us. He's not going to say them. I'm sure as hell not finishing the sentence. _Don't tell._ Don't let anybody know. This has to be our little secret because, if it isn't, it's my ass. And my career. And he knows it. So he's made up his mind to leave. Because he thinks he's saving me.

"Is that all this is about? Danny, for God's sake, you knew what you were getting into when you--" When he what? How, exactly, do I explain what he did? Even after all this time? "When you told me you wanted a relationship." Vague, even by my admission, but enough to get the point across.

"Yeah, I knew." He takes another breath and backs his way to the door. "You didn't."

"Daniel, for cryin' out loud I'm the one the thing applies to! I knew--"

"Good-bye Jack." He says it with such a finality that I can't possibly believe him. Then he opens my door, slips out, closes it behind him, and he's--

Gone.

No, Danny Boy, I don't think so. I throw the door open and storm after him, my mind shouting after him so loudly I'm surprised he can't hear the thoughts inside my head..

_You should know me well enough by now to know you can't drop something like this on me and expect me to just roll with it! You're the only reason I've managed to get my life back together and I'm not going to let you walk out of it without one hell of a fight. I've already made that mistake once and, sorry, I'm not going there again. I lost Sara and I can deal with that. I lost Charlie and I lost Skaara, and I'm trying like hell to find a way to deal with that. I'm not losing you, too._

But, of course I don't say any of that out loud. Because it might actually come out sounding perfect. Or change his mind. I've never been good at doing anything right that doesn't involve tactical strategy. I've always been a disaster at love. Now, here I am, stalking Daniel down a corridor, getting quite a lot of odd looks from the people we're passing, not saying anything because the synapse that actually gets the words from my head to come out of my mouth refuses to function. I want to say all those things to him. I want to so badly that I can't elieve I'm not saying them.

"Daniel, wait!" That's what comes out. Way to go, Jack. Brilliant, as usual. You ought to get another medal for that amazing personal sacrifice.

He slips onto the elevator as members of SG-9 slip off. The room starts to shake a little. Hammond must have ordered a field trip to planet PX-What-The-Hell-Ever. Usually, I'm there to see the other teams off, wish them luck. Not today. They'll be fine without me, but I won't be fine without Daniel.

"Come on! Just listen--"

He cuts me off with nothing more than a shake of his head.

"Why are you doing this?" Because I never know when to shut up.

He wipes his eyes, puts his glasses back on. "It's best for both of us."

"I still don't see how." _Tell him you love him._ "What do you think you're doing, Daniel, killing me to save me?"

_Tell him you love him._ I'm trying! So why do my words keep coming out like I want a fight? Like I don't think anything more of him now than the way I act towards him every time we visit a new world? The way I want only because I'm scared to death Carter or Teal'c or Hammond would take one look at us and know what was going on. I doubt Teal'c would understand the magnitude of the situation--Hell, he'd probably be happy for us in his own stoic way--but Carter and Hammond wouldn't be able to turn a blind eye. Against the rules and all. Which was why Daniel's leaving.

"I can't keep letting you risk yourself--"

He stops because the elevator stops. The doors open. And there's Hammond. My CO nods a greeting to both of us as he steps on and hits the down button, seems disappointed when the lift keeps going up with me and Daniel before accommodating his wishes. I look for something to dig my fingers into in frustration, settle for balling my fists together and shoving them into my pockets. Daniel risks a sidelong glance at me that's almost a challenge. I stare back. There's a lot of bad vibrations in the elevator that have nothing to do with the Gate activation. Hammond's not an idiot, he picks up on them.

"Gentlemen, is this another one of those strategic versus cultural arguments?" He looks back and for the between us like it had better not be. He's sick and tired of having to referee them, as sick and tired as I am of having to keep up the façade that Daniel's passions don't matter to me.

"What else?" I say as Daniel vents some noise of extreme frustration. He's standing slightly behind Hammond, so he gives me another look, the kind that tells me this is why we're breaking up.

Funny, we never really got around to dating. Just a hell of a lot of time spent in each other's company, usually talking about something stupid or just drinking beer and watching hockey. Or the Discovery or Learning Channels whenever Daniel would snatch the remote away during a commercial. And a lot having sex. But mostly just being with each other, a very simple act I'd taken for granted in a lot of past relationships. I'd definitely taken it for granted with Daniel.

_You don't know what you've got until it's gone._

That was the problem with damned cliches--they were cliches because they were true.

"But why quit?" I ask once we're off the elevator and alone again, when I'm back to trailing him to the main exit.

"You're more important than I am." He says it without looking back. "They need you more than they need me."

"Damn it, Jackson, that is not true!"

He doesn't answer me, so I close the gap between us, lock my hand around my arm and make him turn and look at me. "We wouldn't even have this program if it wasn't for you! If you hadn't figured out that those symbols were constellations, everybody in this building would still be sitting around scratching their asses. Even if we'd gotten through the first time we went to Abydos, we sure as hell wouldn't have gotten home. Don't give me that 'I'm not important' bullshit."

"I'm not." God, I wish he didn't sound like he believed it. "You and Sam and Teal'c have your military thing and I--I don't know. I get in trouble and get stuck behind and you have to keep risking your lives because I think some rock looks interesting. Besides, if I stay here and we keep this up, somebody's going to find out. Then we're both out, you for breaking that policy and me because nobody wanted me along to begin with. I can't let that happen to you. You're the one everybody looks to. You're the commander of SG-_One_. You're too valuable to throw it all away because of some dweeb."

"You are not a dweeb."

He rolls his eyes, looking at me that way he does when I'm driving him crazy. Crazy on a professional level. I like the other look he gives me when I'm driving him crazy while we're alone a lot more. "You've called me one at least once."

"I have not!"

"When I was teaching Skaara to speak English, he asked me what the word meant. When I wondered where he'd heard it from, he said you'd used it the first time we came through the Gate, that night you were trying to find me and Sha're. That kid doesn't let anything slip past him, remember?"

I sigh. "Okay, so I called you a dweeb. And a geek and a nerd and a bunch of other things that are all perfectly applicable, but that isn't what this is about. The point is that you're every bit as important to the SGC as me or Sam or Teal'c or anyone else."

"I'm--"

"Danny, you just proved your own point!" I'm shouting at him now, so he turns me and starts walking again. I go right back to chasing after him, stalking after him like I'm some junior yap dog trying to get a point across to my CO. "Nobody else would have stayed behind to make sure those people got by okay! You put yourself in the line of fire time after time after time to protect people you've never even met--"

"Go ahead in say it, I'm a hazard."

Again I grab his arm. He tries to break free, so I grab his chin too and make him look at me. "What I'm saying is that you're our soul. You're the one who keeps reminding me to look past some damned strategic importance to the bigger picture. You keep me honest, you keep me sane, and you keep me human. I don't see how that's not important."

"You've never said that before." My words have shaken him as badly as this bombshell he's dropped on my desk has shaken me. Good, we're making progress. Or so I think until he again slips from my grasp and starts walking again.

"Yeah, I know, I was too busy giving you a hard time." _Too busy treating him like nothing he had to contribute was of any importance, you mean to say. Always had to quip one more wise crack or blatant "who cares." One more "get your butt back through the gate" because what you're doing doesn't matter. If we can't exploit it of blow it up, we don't need it._

God, sometimes I wonder what he must think of me.

Or what in the hell he ever saw in me.

Okay, so Daniel had this thing about taking in lost puppies. Hell, he'd adopted all of Abydos and drafted me a surrogate parent before I'd realized what happened. At the time, I'd hated him for it. Charlie had just died and here was this geek telling me that my life still served a purpose like he had any idea what I'd been through. Well, if he hadn't before, he knew now. My son was dead and his wife was the queen of the very things we'd been ordered to destroy. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Daniel and I had decided we were more than comrades-in-arms. Proving that life did have a sense of humor. A very dry, very sarcastic, very morbid sense of humor.

"I'm saying it now!" I call after him. We're in the garage now, stalking past the rows of nondescript transport vehicles, that kind that make you realize our government could do a lot better. But when you're running a seven billion dollar black ops program, maybe you can't. Not the time to think about it. So not the time.

Daniel doesn't acknowledge me, just keeps stalking towards the Mountain's tunnel entrance. It's pouring the rain outside, I can hear it as well as see it. I've never seen rain like that in my life. Daniel doesn't seem to see it, though. He walks right out in it, letting it soak him. He says something to one of the guards, can't hear what, and goes out further into the rain. I follow, but not before grabbing the umbrella from the sergeant he spoke to. I want to ask him what the hell Daniel said to him, but manage to find the restraint. Not good to sound like a crazy person, not in front of my command, at least.

The wind threatens to jerk what little protection I have from the rain out of my hands as I follow Daniel. The force of the gusts practically pushes me to where he's finally planted himself, back to me, hugging himself in a very futile effort to stay dry. I try to fit us both under the umbrella, even though the wind and the sheer force of the falling droplets ensure we're both going to get soaked either way. He won't even let me do that for him.

_So I'll make everything right between us right now, then take him back down to my office, close the blinds, lock the door and we'll get each other out of these wet clothes. _

"Why are you doing this?" Nowhere close to the eloquent words I'd hoped for. 

For a long time, all he can do is shake his head. "Because you can't have us both and ever be happy."

Us both. So that's the way he sees it. Him. Or the other love of my life. My career. SG-1.

"Then tell me to choose!" I'm shouting at him like a madman, then rain blowing in beneath my umbrella and splattering on my face. "Tell me to quit! Tell me to resign my goddamn commission, Danny, because I swear to God I'll do it! I'll give it up, every bit of it, right now! Right this second! Just tell me to get in the car with you and I will!"

He stares at me for so long, irises a pool or regret, soaked in ever-growing moisture. Like the rest of him. His hair is flattened by the rain, every inch of clothing drenched to the point of dripping. "I can't do that."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because I don't want to give you an ultimatum, Jack! I don't want to tell you to choose because one day you'll hate me for making you."

"Danny--"

I stop. Daniel's car pulls out of the mountain and right up to us. The guard Daniel had spoke to climbs out from behind the wheel and rushes back to the dray safety of the tunnel.

"You know I'm right. You love your career as much as you love me." He sighs, goes to the driver's side door. "And there will come a day when you'll hate me for making you choose."

"That's shit!"

"You know it'll happen."

I know it will, as much as I'm standing here trying to convince myself otherwise. Part of me wants to hate him for having the ability to see so far ahead. People had always accused me of lacking in imagination, of being some hardened, military, cynical son of a bitch who coasted through life on wisecracks. It wasn't true, or at least it wasn't that simple. I'd never coasted through anything, I just projected the illusion because I didn't want to have to think too far ahead into the future. I liked the present. It was where I'd encountered the least amount of pain and resistance.

I can't stop myself from reaching out and taking a lock of that shaggy hair, running it between my thumb and forefinger. This is it, my every fear come true. I'm standing here, helpless. He's leaving me. He's really going and I can't stop him. He's standing there with the car's door open, the engine running, one hand on the doorframe, the other frozen in mid-reach to close around mine. He's watching me, those beautiful eyes wide and shining behind those endearingly geeky glasses. He wants me to stop him. He doesn't want to leave me any more than I want to have to watch his car pull away without me in it.

_Stop me._ I can see it in every part of him. And I want to. Oh, God, I want to. I want to take him in my arms, feel him dig his fingers into my shoulders they way he does when he holds me when life gets too much. I want to hold on to him, run my fingers through that mop of hair and tell him I love him more than I thought I could ever love anything else. This is my fault, all of it. I want to tell him so. I want to fix it.

I lean in, meaning to brush those unruly bangs aside and kiss his forehead, then let my lips wander down to his. I stop just short, and all I can do is stare into those wavering irises.

"That's why I'm leaving." The tears break his voice. "You can't even kiss me good-bye because you're worried somebody's watching."

"I love you," I say, because I don't care who overhears. Because, and he knows it too, everybody's too far away to overhear.

He shakes his head. That first brimming tear finally slips free. "I never said you didn't."

"I love you," I repeat. Why can't he understand that? Why can't it be enough?

"I know." I wait for him to tell me to quit, to leave this damnable lifestyle and come with him, spend the rest of my life smiling at him while he empties another room with one of his crazy theories or while he stares a at rock with funny writing like it's the coolest thing in the world. I could do it. Forever. I didn't care what I did with the rest of my life as long as he was a part of it.

"Good-bye." That's all he says. Doesn't even use my name. Doesn't even use my rank as one last, final twist of the knife. It makes what he's saying--what he'd just told me--sound so much more final.

I watch him as he climbs into the car, having to adjust the seat so that his long legs won't put any extra pressure on the pedals. He's crying so hard that I don't know how he's going to drive. He's completely lost all control and he's not even trying to get it back. Just letting the tears fall as fast as they want to, and they're falling fast. He closes the door, the rain pelting the window all but obscuring his face. I can barely see him, but I watch him wipe his face with the back of a hand, smearing the tears around his beautiful face, doing nothing to stop their flow or even wipe them off.

He puts the car in drive and pulls slowly away, and I'm left standing in the rain, watching the taillights grow smaller and smaller, ever the stoic soldier, watching the only thing that ever mattered to me walk out of my life, possibly forever. And I'm pretending like it doesn't matter, hoping I can make it to my office before I realize I'm nowhere near as strong as he's always thought I was.

I don't move, just stand there in the pouring rain, let the umbrella, still-open, drop to my side. I stand there and let myself get soaked, watch the road even after I can no longer see his taillights. I stand there, stoic, like the soldier I'm supposed to be.

Because in the rain, nobody can tell the water pelting on your face from the tears rolling from your eyes.

End  
08.04.02


End file.
